Child poverty could be addressed much faster with greater investment in early childhood learning and care, a new OECD report says.
The report found that higher health and ageing costs had driven a rise in social spending across OECD countries in the last two decades – from 20 percent to 25 percent of GDP.
Spending on families with children remained below 10 percent of that total. One in eight children was living in poverty as educational outcomes deteriorated.
OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said investing in children was one of the most important actions governments could take to build a stronger future.
“While spending more can make a difference, spending better can make a much bigger difference,” he said.
“Investing in early childhood education and care, supporting parents into employment, providing adequate income support and ensuring access to quality services can give every child a better start in life, while also supporting stronger economies and more sustainable public finances.”
The report said that investing in early childhood education and care (ECEC) could deliver particularly strong returns.
“Directing one additional percentage point of social spending growth towards expanding ECEC coverage could make the investment around 50 percent more effective at reducing child income poverty than if the allocation of the social budget remained unchanged,” the report said.
“That is, child poverty could fall by around 2.25 percentage points, compared to the forecast of 1.5 percentage points, over the next decade.”
Making ECEC accessible to disadvantaged children could enable parents to work, strengthening family incomes and reducing reliance on other forms of support.
It can also help contain future spending pressures.
The analysis found an additional percentage point of investment in ECEC could leave social expenditure around two percent lower over the long term than if the budget allocation remained unchanged.
The full report is here
